Dear me of the past, There are so many things I want to say to you, so many advices I want to give you, but alas, I cannot. I wish I had the power to do so. Then, you could read this letter and move on with your life accordingly. Unfortunately, I too am bounded by the flow of time. What has passed has passed, and now I have to look forward for a better future.

Life is going fine for me, I guess. I have a job that pays me well, and I have a family that treats me well. But time and again my mind drifts back to those days when I had to choose life’s paths—paths that would lead me here. It’s not that those were not the right paths nor it is that I regret where I am today. But I do think about the prospects of how things would have turned out had I taken a different path or made a different choice? Would there be a better outcome than this? Or would the outcome be the same?

Right now you must be preparing for your SLC exams, and I wish you luck even though I already know the result, but I want you to stop the pranks on your teachers. It may seem funny now, but in the future they won’t seem good as you hoped it would. And I know you have heard it before, but I wanted to say anyway, the main hardships of the life starts after this. Sometimes, you will feel like the whole world is coming tumbling down at you and at times you will feel like ending it all. But I want you to be strong and when you emerge from those hardships. I want you to be stronger.

Second thing, Ajay, the guy that you are seeing right now, break up with him if you can. You must have already caught up the whiff of his unfaithfulness. How do I know? Because I am you, silly. And believe me, if you end it now, it will save much drama in your life and the heartbreak that follows will be lesser right now. Don’t worry too much about not being able to find the right person. In the future you will find someone who will really love you for who you are. Speaking of love, I want you to love your parents more than you do now. Confused. Well what I meant was spend more time with them, and by all means argue less with them. Believe me, in the future, when they are gone, you will miss them a lot and cry thinking about them, and then you will regret for talking back at them, ignoring them but more for loving them less than you should. And as for your siblings, you will have ups and downs with them. Not surprisingly though, you will have big fights with Renae for minor reasons in the future, but like always, you guys will patch things up. Oh! One more thing, go easy on little Sandeep. I know he is handful, and you sometimes feel a strong urge to give him a good beating, but few years from now, he will be your strongest supporter. He will be there for you whenever you get into fights with other people; he will be there when you aren’t feeling good about yourself; he will be the one consoling you when you get fired from your job. Okay, don’t panic about what I said on getting fired. I know this sounds bad. But in the long run, it will be for the best, and with the money you will be making with your next job, you won’t complain either.

As for your studies you will do great in the future. But you won’t be studying what you want and half of your college life will pass with you moping around. So, talk to your parents, and urge them to let you pursue what your heart wants. In your life as a student, you will make many friends. Few of them will stick with you until the very end, and among the friends that will leave you, you will have considered some of them like your family. Parting with them will be hard and it will pain you to see them leave. But their departure will also teach you the importance of letting go, to not always be the one putting in the time and effort to keep relationships alive.

As I mentioned earlier in this letter, you will face both hardship and prosperity in your professional life. The road to prosperity, however, will be long and hard. You will face immense criticism from people for your work, your gender, and you will also face tough competition. But you will prove your critics wrong, and with the support from your family, friends and colleagues, you will go on to excel at all the competitions. You will always have people willing to pull you up whenever life knocks you down.

There are so many things that I wanted to write in this letter. About every little detail of what happens in every step of your life. But I do not have the words nor the luxury of time to describe them. Even if I were to do it, it would take many days and many papers to fill. I know you will not get this letter and you will not get to read it, but it makes me feel better just knowing that I was able to write my feelings down, that I was able to go back to each and every step of my life, look at my own life as an outsider.

Well, it’s almost 8 in the evening. Jeez, I have really written a long letter to you. Time indeed flew by fast writing this letter to you. I better go now, and prepare the bath because he will be home any minute. It’s kind of hard to move around a bit with the baby on the way, but you should not worry about that. Now stop reading the letter and go study for the exams. You have a future to make.

Sincerely yours,

Future self